From Implicit Theories to Creative Achievements: The Mediating Role of Creativity Motivation in the Relationship between Stereotypes, Growth Mindset, and Creative Achievement

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that implicit theories of creativity are crucial in shaping an individual’s behavior and real‐life decisions toward being creative. The present study proposed and examined the underlying mechanisms of how two kinds of implicit theories—the growth mindset of the creative self and the stereotype of creative others—are associated with creative achievements through the mediating role of creativity motivation. Participants were 606 undergraduate students who were enrolled in an education major in two universities in China. Overall, the study found that Chinese students held a positive image toward a creative student, regarding him or her as highly competent, warm, and popular. Student perceptions of a creative other were positively related to their growth mindset of creativity. Moreover, results verified both the mediating role of creativity motivation on growth mindset, as well as the effect of positive stereotyping of the creative other on students’ creative achievement. These findings point to promising creativity motivation strategies including the cultivation of a malleable view of creativity and of creative role models, that may, in turn, promote creative achievement by encouraging students to do, learn, and accomplish new things.

Relationships between proactive personality and creativity: Mindsets and golden mean thinking as parallel mediators among Chinese third language students

“…According to Intasao and Hao (2018) , a fixed mindset is negatively related to creative performance, and a high creative growth mindset tends to be connected with desirable creative performance. Such finding also conforms to what Li et al (2021) have discovered: students adopt more creative behaviors through learning, working on, and achieving new matters.…”

Research Hotspot and Trend of Employee Creativity Based on Bibliometric Analysis

“…(4) Individual factors affecting employee creativity include motivation (centrality = 0.12), creative self-efficacy (centrality = 0.08), and personality (centrality = 0.04), which play an important role in the field of personal perception and self-consciousness. Taking motivation as an example, some scholars expanded from the perspectives of cognitive motivation, achievement motivation, innovation motivation, task motivation, prosocial motivation, auto motivation, and creative motivation ( Grant and Berry, 2011 ; Liu et al, 2013 ; Li P. et al, 2020 ). The recognition and re-understanding of personality also deserve attention.…”

“…In recent years, some scholars have also studied from positive perspective ( Tse et al, 2018 ), such as service leadership, authentic leadership, charismatic leadership, shared leadership, supportive leadership, benevolent leadership, and ethical leadership, while others have studied from a negative perspective, such as self-serving leadership and paradoxical leadership ( Hou et al, 2019 ; Peng et al, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2019 ). In addition, human resource management systems are the traditional research topics in the field, such as high-performance work system and high-commitment work system ( Zhou et al, 2019 ; Li H. et al, 2020 ; Li P. et al, 2020 ).…”

Unlock the innovation potential of meaning of work: An empirical study of scientific and technological workers in China

“…Moreover, people with a low level of achievement motivation tend to avoid challenges and failures (Durik and Harackiewicz, 2003). Recent research finds that when individuals desire to match the high level of creativity, they will have a higher intrinsic motivation to promote innovative behavior (Li et al, 2020). Therefore, science and technology workers with a high level of achievement motivation spontaneously devote themselves to work to actively discover the work problems and make beneficial attempts.…”